Know what your business data says..

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In an ultimate chase to bring about all that should make your business work, you went online. That’s laudable. But know, odd are, it will do more harm than good, if you just have your presence. A website is not just an html page on the World Wide Web, but a well-crafted, representation of your brand- essentially storefront of your business, online.

That is to say, if you put up a rough, unpolished, image of you, people should have no reason to disbelief – it you. But again, that’s not what you want. After those year of building a business brick by brick, pumping in life and blood, through sweat and pain, that’s the last thing you could hope for – a wrong perception.

But as much as I believe, businesses have a role to play to taint their own image, the hands giving shape to their wishes are equally responsible. Why? Because they are supposed to know better what works and what does not. It’s not just a blindfolded execution of “client requirement” but suggestion advices, analytics and key insights. That’s what makes or breaks a deal.

“Know the laws of the land to the survive; know the rules of online territory or perish”

And these rules just do not come by, they needs to be researched – from literature, data analytics, new innovations, theories. There is a reward to stay up to date and if you think you or you’re your business has no time for it, better entrust this responsibility to someone who does – a good deal of it. Choose your website vendors, cautiously . They could be as misleading and high priced as a novice.

Standing at crossroads of decisions and determined to make no mistake an entrepreneur will always look into some business insights, tips, research online and consult experts before the next step- That’s precisely what is data analysis.

Analytics and business research is a part and parcel of every business. Many believe these are only for large businesses to benefit from. Truth is, large businesses would have never got any far had they not started analytics as small businesses.

Take the world by a spin- have your business rule!

Actionable insights from time to time can help you decide what content to put up on your website, what resources to hire, which customer to value and reward more than others and what products lying at the back of your store is actually high in demand.

But question is how do you get started especially as startups when most of your focus is to set up your business or get it off the ground? How do you know what data to analysis, and how it will help? Here’s a question:

What is the one (or two) biggest constraint to your growth? Put on your analyst’s cap and brainstorm on that thing which if resolved can help your business grow faster and easier. It can be your website, social media strategy, location of your retail, financial assistance or customer preference for your product(s)

After you have identified the constraints , analyze how you can resolve it. Determine one metric that you could track and see how far is your constraint resolved. This metrics defines your constraint in the sense that, its increase or decrease should show if your issues are getting fixed or not. This could be sales, cost incurred per customer, No.of customer per lead generated or event as simple as profit%.

For eg. if your constraint is website and its performance – have a goal set . Measure number of customers per visitor or per session of time spent or bounce rates. These are just examples . Link it up with an analytic tool like – Google Analytics and give it a few weeks to gather some data. Then try to read the basic reports. Understand user behavior, in-page analytics, and conversion rates. Check the user navigation pattern and try to find where most of the traffic drops off or which pages have highest time spent. Your metrics for web performance , will be very easy to track using this tool.

If customer satisfaction poses to be the biggest constraint to your sales and return sales, try to understand the why behind customer behavior. Check out metrics like , retention rate, or no of return per sale, frequency or recency of visits for every visitor that steps into your store or your ecommerce. A Market research describing the level of acceptability of your products or services could be a handy document to refer. These could tell why your target group behave the way they do and clues to what you need to do about it.

Inventory management could be a constraint too. That’s when you often end up delaying a delivery or run out of stock or end up spending most of your budget on piles .It’s time to analyse it. Understand the seasonality of products , whats in demand, when and how much to stock. Derive trends and patterns. If not data from your business, then look into others, A number of services, provide reports and syndicated analysis. Reach out to a low cost report . You could also reach us for one such study.

If a store a perfect location , is the biggest roadblock to a large number of footprints in your store, then too data will help you resolve. Look into demographics , compare it with your target group and check which location in your locality, will be the best fit. Analyse population and commercial renting rate.Draw a draft picture for your self on possible areas and know how to narrow down to one or two that works best.

Analysis of data can really be as varied as the number of constraints and problem you face in business.To say data guarantees success would be overrating, but sure it can increase the chance that you will win the game.. It can be a great support system to your daily decision making and put your business on the path on growth.

a. Be it daily operations, cash flows, website data or ones from social media, we analyze all of them together, on one platform, draw, connections, correlations, causes and offer our clients set of easily actionable insights. Tools are really in abundance and we are not selling another expensive one, all that we are sellingis a promise that our analysts will offer modern and conventional analytics , work with you and help you see hidden opportunities from your business data.Schedule a free consultation

This is a post about how confusing data can get for businesses and how to find a way out. It starts with a visual sketch of typical businesses caught in a sea of data – moves on to describe what it might look like in daily life and then offers a simple, step-wise, actionable solution .

Is that you .. out there? Then its time you found a way to sail through!

Imagine yourself waking up in a rocking bed of sorts, with a chill breezing over your body and lots of light dazzling on your eyes. Squinting uneasily from within , you realize you are out in the open, beneath the deep blue sky, crammed in a small boat that somehow has kept you afloat on an endless mass of scary waters. That’s Mr. Pi, a direct lift from his book of ‘Life’, as you might be knowing. Amusing, it might be to imagine yourself as him, but if you were a modern day business manager /entrepreneur and woke up to a sea of data with all the pressure to behave like an analyst- it sure would have been a pain.

As modern day business manager you probably have one or all of these typical traits that show you’ve never got a chance to use data . So may be your vendors have gotten you to spend big on tools that produce great looking, pretty reports . But deep down, you feel they are dumb, at times funny, but never really insightful. May be,you’ve always felt like asking ‘SO What’ to all those metrics and numbers but never found a direct ,straightforward answer. And worst you have never paid much attention to hiring a good analyst for your business.

Relax, you are not alone.These are common traits and like every other danger posing mankind, these too can be won. Obviously, it involves a method and few steps to get all right.

Know, there are only 4 areas to look into- Your Business, Your Business Goals, Your Customers and Your Competitors. Notice how this stretches your perspective from your business to yourself to your business as entity in the market place. That really is the journey of all businesses on planet. All our business issues pertain to one or some of these areas combined. Tying data insights back to these four areas will keep it relevant but more importantly you will get to see through some problems. Already overwhelming? Try another way.Try finding answers to these:

1. What is the basic business idea, how far is it acceptable to your audience? Is your idea sale-able? Does the clicks,visits or time spent on website tell anything?

2. How far are your goals achieved? What is the conversion rate in terms of increasing sales,lowering cost and increased customer loyalty?

3. Why does this happen? Why are targets met- if at all they are? Why do customers behave or react the way they do? What’s on with your messages , communication, product lineup or customer service?

4.What else? How is your competition performing ? Which areas do you lead and which areas do others? Where do you stand in the market place ?

And as you look into each question , you will find yourself untangling the muddled up knot and comprehending each area , gleaning out insights and using it to know and manage your business better.

Always Know…..

If data to you is sea, insights will be salt laden, wasteful sea water, but if you’ve segmented it successfully , observed them linking back to areas of concern , data will really look like that beautiful lake with sweet water for life.

Now smile 🙂 you are no more in deep sea.

About Hedgehog Insights– We are data analytics service provider . We offer analysis of business data. Be it daily operations, cash flows, website data or ones from social media, we analyze all of them together, on one platform, draw, connections, correlations, causes and offer our clients set of easily actionable insights. Tools are really in abundance and we are not selling another expensive one, all that we are selling is a promise that our analysts will offer modern and conventional analytics , work with you and help you see hidden opportunities from your business data.Schedule a free consultation

With the growing necessity of a formidable web presence for every business these days, little do we doubt that those websites are an important sales channel .Don’t we? The pages of content are not just beautiful information for mankind but a way to generate leads, attract conversion and grow business.

And why not? If you notice, this season, will need it more than ever. So says the forecasts.

total holiday sales to climb to between $981 and $986 billion, representing a 4 to 4.5 percent increase in November through January holiday sales (excluding motor vehicles and gasoline) over last season…. digital interactions will influence 50 percent, or $345 billion, of retail stores sales this holiday season. This figure reflects the extent to which consumers’ use of desktop and laptop computers, tablets, and smartphones influence brick-and-mortar store sales. Deloitte

Useful Tips to prep up for November Sales

With numerous offer shout outs from every channel and every media, customers will want to dig out the best deal with least struggle and therefore will take to online platforms more wholeheartedly, than ever before. By the way- most of those searches actually convert to sales in physical stores (pickup) or online. Hence it is just too practical to step to it and get your websites all set for the holiday sales.

Get On-Site Optimizations ready- Analytics and research show all online searches during this season are combination of few keywords (plus your product specifications) used specially during this season. Keywords like deals, offers, discounts, best discount are just some of the handful few. You can easily get an exhaustive list and include them in your content, URLs, Meta descriptions and titles. Use images that are SEO friendly. Pick buzz words related to your current offer description and use them selectively in ALT text, image file names and title tags.

Build Link- inbound and outbound- If you want to avoid changing the content completely there is a, actually two way out. Include a small patch/ widget within your product pages with offers and calls to action. 2 – Use blogs. That’s your territory– make use of it. Wright about products or your service offering, profusely hyperlink words and litter keywords wisely.

Make Sure Site Architecture Holds Up. The holidays often result in new products, categories, and gift shops. Are these added to your sitemap ? Do they create duplicate content? How are they linked throughout navigation? This may sound trivial, but it greatly affects rankings and correct page indexing.

Prevent outages – Consult with an IT consultant, if time permits. Based on the traffic you can or want to support check if there are cloud based services to hire. Google has started cost effective cloud based data handling to avoid site crashes. Gear up site security if it involves transactions. If you are into a network Freeze, do try requesting for an emergency change window to avoid downtime.

Test and Review- It goes without saying that if you are doing it do it right or don’t. Having promo codes that do not work, page full of images that do not load, or websites that crash with heavy traffic, will put off even the possibility of sales you had before all this gearing up. Link it up with web analytics tool. One great is Google Analytics. It will help you track your traffic, test versions of your pages, review changes, analyze the keywords report and know how traffic flows within your website. Get some quick insights using CrazyEgg, Google PageSpeed or Compete. Just punch in your website URL and get quick tips on site speed, online competition, site heat maps etc. Of course we are always there to help you with this. But, whether you hire an analysts or not, do have your website tracked. It’s important you know you are doing it right.

Wrapping your head around these great ideas and then putting up some great, hard work to have a dazzling online business you may be sure to attract the most cynical of November-sale-onlookers , but actually you are not yet done. All this goes down the drain , if you don’t have the right buzz. Make a noise, shout out. More on this from our Social Media Tips specially tuned to maximize November sales.

About Hedgehog Insights– We are data analytics service provider . We offer analysis of business data. Be it daily operations, cash flows, website data or ones from social media, we put them all together, draw connections and correlations, derive trends and patterns understand causes and offer our clients a set of easily actionable insights. Tools are in abundance and we are not selling another expensive one.All that we are selling is a promise that our analysts will offer modern and conventional analytics, work with you and help you see hidden opportunities from your business data. Schedule a free consultation .

A popular belief is –analytics and data research is actually for large businesses. Truth is , large businesses would have never got that far had they not started analytics as small businesses.”

Scottish writer and poet , in 1910 Andrew Lang said , he uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts—for support rather than illumination. Decades later, businesses still use data primarily as a support to decision making. That is perhaps the most important and high return functional of data.

In the words of Max Shron , the analysis of data really unfolds like a story-similar to a story, a project will always include description on the situation, a rigorous analysis of the need , a motivated drive to conquer the need, hopefully, a happily-ever-after ending (the outcome).

Analytics and business research is a part and parcel of every business. Standing at crossroads of decisions and determined to make no mistake an entrepreneur always will look into some insights, tips, research online and consult experts before the next step.

A popular belief is –analytics and data research is actually for large businesses. Truth is , large businesses would have never got that far had they not started analytics as small businesses.We and our team of data analyst are here to help your small business grow.

Our Idea – Going back to the story-analogy- a data analytics project, as we propose at Hedgehog Insights is taking our clients through understanding data , defining what it means to business and executing a process to see outcomes .

Data Definition is essentially understanding..

The Need: What specific needs could be addressed by intelligently using data? What will this project accomplish that was impossible before?

Data Sources- Where is this data located. What data should be considered for different business requirements.

Envisioning results- What will meeting the need with data look like? Is it possible to mock up the final result? What is the logic behind the solution?

Linking to Outcome: How and by whom will the result be used and integrated into the company? How will the success of the project be measured?

Analytics Project Execution-

Our analysts work in association with the client business, co-ordinates with team members and business owners to execute an analytics project and successfully achieve the desired results. The steps in this are:

Preparing Data for analysis – Data analysis is really about digging deep to brainstorm and reveal insights. But before that it is essential we have the tools ready. Some of the most popular tools we use are

Filtering- we know how to cut the noise, to focus on the most interesting topic.

Sorting- Arranging data in order- for some nature, or class etc.

Grouping & Segmentation- summarizing data and segmenting different group

Visualizing- Bringing data to life, having data mindfully aesthetic. We are naturally attracted to beauty, so why not make a chart as pretty as possible? Aesthetics can also help make the charts easier to comprehend—pinpointing the resulting action.

Analytics- This really involves making sense of the data. Using techniques and processes to glean out actionable insights

Working with multiple perspectives- Data from different sources bring in different information , add an extra dimension. Having all data from diversified sources analysed on a unified platform to solve a specific business issue, makes analysis extremely robust, reliable and focused . That’s is adding value to client businesses.

We hope these services together , make analytics and data support well within the reach of small, micro and medium scale businesses and offers the surest and quickest path to growth. This is our overall idea. We have categories levels of services based on business scale of operation. For details on our services specific to each scale please visit

December sales on smartphones and tablets were up threefold from 2011 to 19.1% (IBM Experience One, 2014).

52% of online smartphone shoppers used their phones throughout the shopping process during the 2013 holidays (Google and Ipsos MediaCT, 2014).

It is preferred for several reasons, but the one that matters to us is that – it is used on the go with a level of urgency. People mostly want something and want it immediately when they are searching on mobile and more than 90% make a purchase. Doesn’t that sound like your perfect target group? Sure! Consumers are easier to get a message across when they are searching for one. And here they are receptive to it. Just one basic question here- Is your website mobile optimized? Do visitors have a good experience navigating your website on their phones? How can you tell that? How to start your analysis?

Our answer- start with testing simple elements. Test two areas- one,the technicalities/platforms and two, user acceptance. This will give you ideas to grab the low hanging fruits immediately. Here is a way-Just copy and paste your website address in one of these tools likeGoogle PageSpeed Insights , GTMetrics orTools.Ping. And almost instantly you get a full report. It talks about site speed ,user experience (size of font and tap targets). The report tells what to fix and how to fix with in depth technicalities. So unless you are coding your website, pass this info on to the one who does for you. A coder can make sense of it .

That was the technical side .But what does it mean to your business. Well you can easily see that if you have your website linked with Google Analytics or a similar web analytics and tracking tool. The tools are free and easy to use. From our experience ,Google analytics seem to produce the most insightful analytical and actionable information. Once it is set up to track your mobiles(we suggest hire a vendor) you can start getting a set a very vital information.

Who uses your apps now, on what devices, and where they come from- Traffic Sources reports and Google Play integration

Real-time reporting to show you who’s using your app, as they use it. Behavioral features show you the exact screens where users take action, pause… or disappear.

Mobile App Analytics help you set and track the goal conversions you want most: purchases, clicks, or simply time spent on your app

If you implement the insights and tips from these two areas you will ideally be addressing Usability and design . That is one important mobile element and probably the quickest and surest path to conversion hikes(Forrester)

About Hedgehog Insights– We are data analytics service provider . We offer analysis of business data. Be it daily operations, cash flows, website data or ones from social media, we analyze all of them together, on one platform, draw, connections, correlations, causes and offer our clients set of easily actionable insights. Tools are really in abundance and we are not selling another expensive one, all that we are selling is a promise that our analysts will offer modern and conventional analytics , work with you and help you see hidden opportunities from your business data. Schedule a free consultation .

When is the last time you fed them what they love? Newsletter analytics is a little more than clicks and opens. In case you are getting just that from your e-mailing vendor, you are missing out on a bigger and more important chunk of information. Here is a guide to how you can make the most of newsletters yourself ..

Type newsletter analytics on your search engine. Some 4.5 million records show up in 0.22 seconds. Bravo! Now try checking the links until your hand goes numb and you will see they speak about tracking your newsletter. Your search page is filled with vendors offering tools to track your newsletter. May be you already have one or maybe you will go with one like our clients. It’s trilling to see the count who received your little electronic pack of ‘big –bang-theories’, count who opened to glance through, count who clicked to read more and count who (alas) missed your newsletter. You will get over this soon and realize it’s all too bogus and often dumb. Like our clients, who almost felt tortured with this recurring dump of counts, matching lumps of recurring expenditure? Why? Because those counts never tell you how much sales you got, cost you could reduce, or social rewards (likes & shares) you’ve earned. Well I will not repeat ‘How great a king is content’ or ‘how awesome are calls to action’. I will instead draw your attention to 3 steps to compare your current feeds Vs what you should .Just 3 Steps.

1. Segment topics you have used so far- categorize those to as basic levels as possible. Let’s explain with an example. Take any story. Say it’s on ‘The Importance of Newsletter Analytics’. At a higher level it’s about marketing. But as you dissect more, you will know it’s about online marketing, direct email communication, analytics etc. It’s like placing it exactly where it belongs, in the right folder. Now take each issue and repeat this for each of the topics. By the time you are done for all issues you will have a small database with great info in store? Why? Read on ..

2, Map your counts of opens and clicks. – The counts of opens and clicks you’ve had so far will come to a real use now. You will know what ‘exactly/precisely’ have been accepted, what was dumped and what did not matter to your audience. So it may reveal something you had been working hard for long , really does not interest them , but a piece of story that’s been lying on your desk , was better. Isn’t that a goldmine of information? Sure it is. It indicates popularity of one topic over another, and their trends over months and years.

You may also be using calls to action, which is obviously different from just feeding in stories. It requires the reader to take an action and therefore there is a little more than just mapping topics to clicks. Read on thishttp://bit.ly/1msuzwn

3. Check with the market: You have got a data base . You know how each topic performed now check with the market. Research. Rummage the internet , dive into books/journals ,get hands on trends and syndicated studies that tells what your target audience actually prefer. Compare it with what you have been feeding and know where you stand. Are you at par with their area of interest or falling out. Customize your newsletter strategy. Align it to your business goals . And…all set to start afresh.

With such comparisons over a period , you will have a good knowledge about what works and what does not .Thereby you’ve have put yourself and your business in a very advantageous position to make the most of your newsletter and all the time money and effort you have invested.

About Hedgehog Insights– We are data analytics service provider . We offer analysis of business data. Be it daily operations, cash flows, website data or ones from social media, we analyze all of them together, on one platform, draw, connections, correlations, causes and offer our clients set of easily actionable insights. Tools are really in abundance and we are not selling another expensive one, all that we are selling is a promise that our analysts will offer modern and conventional analytics , work with you and help you see hidden opportunities from your business data. Schedule a free consultation .